The Bowes Cup, by Jacob Bodendick, 1675-6
The Bowes cup was probably a race prize. As early as 1607 gold was offered as prizes and in the 1640s the City of Salisbury owned a pair of gold spurs, given as a race prize by the Earl of Pembroke. In 1695 Sir William Bowes, a Northern magnate and successful breeder of race horses, proposed to the Bishop of Durham that money be raised to buy trophies and plate to be raced for on Durham Moor. A cup of gold with the Bowes arms and crest would have been a lavish but appropriate prize, perhaps won at a race meeting in County Durham.
A gift in your will
You may not have thought of including a gift to a museum in your will, but the V&A is a charity and legacies form an important source of funding for our work. It is not just the great collectors and the wealthy who leave legacies to the V&A. Legacies of all sizes, large and small, make a real difference to what we can do and your support can help ensure that future generations enjoy the V&A as much as you have.
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Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton (DVD)

There is a striking contrast between the extremely formal structure of Vuitton and Jacobs's extremely laidback attitude. Hired in 1998, confident and …
Buy nowEvent - Mansion House Art Collection
Mon 16 September 2013 14:00

Mansion House is home to The Harold Samuel Collection of Dutch and Flemish Seventeenth Century Paintings, described as “the finest collection of such works to be formed in Britain this century”.
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